Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
If you purchased health insurance through Covered California brace yourself for a bevy of letters and notices arriving in your mail box this summer and fall. Covered California will be sending out marketing material, renewal notices, letters asking you to create an online account, reminders to verify your income, and requests for immigration documents. Create […]
Covered California and the IRS have been encouraging individuals and families that have purchased health insurance through the state or federal exchange to update their household income whenever there is a change. The simple act of reporting this change of income through Covered California is considered a qualifying event for a Special Enrollment Period. Once […]
Covered California is ratcheting up the emails and letters to consumers on a variety of topics from immigration verification to renewing their health plans for 2015. Some of these letters for additional information, consent, or to manage verifications will ultimately be confusing to the consumer. In a Certified Insurance Agent webinar, Covered California went over […]
How health insurance companies and health plans determine premium rate increases is a little bit of a mystery. Covered California didn’t add to the consumer’s understanding of this process when they released their 2015 health insurance booklet. The plan rates booklet is mostly marketing material and fails to provide specific rates by region, carrier, and […]
In a presentation by Executive Director Peter Lee to the Board of Covered California on the potential effects of the health insurance rate regulation proposal to go before California voters in November, known as Prop. 45, it was clear the passage of the California Department of Insurance supported proposition could present significant challenges to the […]
Covered California has updated the CalHEERS income section of the individual and family plan application to accommodate partial year employment. This was accomplished with the insertion of simple date fields. Now, instead of the annualized income from a job a client has left, the employment can just have a start and end date. Changes to […]
A significant change to the plan types offered for individuals and families through Covered California for 2015 will be Health Net dropping their Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plans. In place of the PPO health plans, Health Net will offer Exclusive Provider Organization (EPO) health plans. This change may be particularly significant for members who relied on […]
There have been few changes to the standard benefit design between 2014 and 2015 health plans offered through Covered California. A comparison of the metal levels offered in 2014 to the standard benefit design announced by Covered California for 2015 individual and family plans reveals modest changes to copayment amounts for prescription drugs, maximum out-of-pocket […]
Have you ever wondered how one of your Covered California accounts got changed when you know that neither you nor the client touched application? Covered California accounts are being mysteriously changed without the applicants knowledge or consent. If you check the Transaction History of the account you might find that this mysterious user known as […]
On August 4th Covered California rolled out another enhancement to their CalHEERS program called “identity proofing”. Before an account holder, Covered California customer service representative (CSR) or Certified Insurance Agent can either Report a Change or create a new enrollment for a health plan, the primary applicant’s identity must be verified. This “Identity Proofing”, as it […]
